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BEAVER CREEK, COLORADO
October 23rd, 2005
Returning to the hunt feels like recidivism. A relapse. The click of a pistol floods Sam’s veins with comfort, and that’s how he knows he’ll never escape this life. Hunting isn’t just what he does. It’s in his blood.
But this time the hunt isn’t for a monster. Not really. It’s for Dean.
Two days. It takes him two whole days to figure the case out, when it would’ve taken Dean one, and Dad even less. Every hour that passes makes Sam feel like failure is creeping in around him. He’s hemorrhaging time he doesn’t have. He paces the cabin until the floor creaks, fanning through Dad’s journal, tearing through his notes that refuse to give him answers fast enough. His mind circles back, again and again, to the moment Dean walked out the door and didn’t come back. He said he was going to the diner? Or the bar? He can’t even remember anymore.
Now Dean’s gone. And Sam’s out of practice.
The trail starts small: whippoorwills are carved over every cabin door, the same bird mounted on the wall in the diner with the rest of the taxidermy. He didn’t think much of it at first, just another mountain town quirk. But Dad’s journal has entries on whippoorwills, chicken scratched notes about daimones that ride sickness like a horse. The Nosoi. Spirits of plague. They don’t kill quickly. They keep their victims lingering. Feeding.
Sam scours the hospital next. The familiar townswoman from the diner slips past him, an insulated blood cooler clutched in her arms, and when he catches her eyes they glint silver under the fluorescents. He jolts, but she’s gone before he can follow. Three more patients are admitted that day, all suffering from “flu-like” symptoms. It lingers in the back of his mind.
Dean is nowhere to be found.
At the library, Sam digs through stacks until he finds a single dusty volume tucked beneath a pile of Greek Tragedy Plays. Pandora’s Box. Plagues escaping like birds. He copies a line into Dad’s journal, hand trembling with urgency:
- Nosoi feed on illness.
- Prefer cold, damp.
- Not violent unless their feeding is disrupted.
Cold. Wet. Perpetual sickness. Where better than Beaver Creek, with its frosted and ice-thin air?
The clerk at the lodge is too helpful when Sam asks where the on-site nurse lives. Sam doesn’t even need to press. He follows the directions through brittle snow, his boots crunching in time with the running clock. The nurse’s cabin window glows amber against the dark, but no footprints disrupt the snow outside. There’s signs of life inside, but they stop outside the door like it vanished. It’s waiting.
He waits too, jaw locked, hand on his gun. Nosoi feed once every few days, stretching the time between meals by nursing their victims just enough to keep them alive. Sam’s gut twists. Dean could be anywhere in there between too weak to move, too fever-drunk to fight.
By the time the cabin light clicks off, Sam’s fingers are stiff around his knife and cold. The lock gives easily under the blade, the door whining open.
The air inside hits him like a wall: sickness, herbal tea, the sour-sweet stench of bile.
The foyer is too neat, too clean, as if no one lives here at all. But in the kitchen, Sam finds evidence of life—boxes of cold medicine torn open, packets emptied into the sink like someone poured them down the drain.
Then he hears it.
A cough. From below.
Sam’s down the stairs in a blink, but what greets him isn’t the Nosoi. The basement has been turned into a sickroom. There are five beds, each lined against the wall and decorated differently.
The basement is cold enough that his breath puffs in front of him.
The first bed is full, a middle aged woman lays unconscious, gaunt, her breath falling and rising so slowly that Sam worries she isn’t breathing at all.
The next two are empty.
And then—
Dean.
Sam stumbles forward like the floor has fallen out from underneath him. Dean’s buried underneath a pile of blankets, the top one patchworked with burnt orange and green stitching. His hair is plastered to his pale face, sweat soaking the pillowcase beneath his head. Still, he trembles like a leaf. He doesn’t react when Sam moves closer, but his face pinches like he’s in the middle of a nightmare. It’s the youngest Sam’s ever seen him look. He looks so sick.
His lips are cracked and bleeding, eyes fluttering behind purpled lids. The majority of color in his face is in his nose, a furious raw red.
“Dean,” Sam whispers, falling to his knees beside the bed. His hand presses gently to his brother’s forehead, brushing his sweat slicked bangs from his eyes. The heat radiating from his face is dsngerous.
“GNnuh?…M—Mbom?”
Dean stirs, dragging in a ragged, rattling breath. His eyes slit open, glazed and unfocused.
Sam swallows the lump in his throat. “No. No, it’s me. It’s Sam.”
Dean coughs weakly, lifting a blanket to his mouth. The sound is brittle, hollow, like his lungs are tearing themselves apart.
“Oh.” His head lolls back against the pillow, a ghost of a grin flickering. “Sammy. Bud. Think ’m sick.”
Sam’s heart cracks down the center into two even parts. They need to move.
He yanks the blankets back, only for Dean to flinch violently, curling tightly into a ball, teeth chattering loud enough to hear.
“Sammy, gimme the b-blankets back. It’s cold, m-man.” His words slur, as though he’s drunk. His gaze drifts in and out of focus.
Sam tries to haul him upright underneath the armpits, desperately, but Dean groans, green-faced, pressing his forehead to his knees.
“Stop. Hurts.”
Sam pauses, hands hovering, stuck between urgency and gentility. “I know it hurts. But we can’t stay here, Dean. I need you to trust me.”
Dean lifts his head, eyes glassy, confusion etched deep. His lips part around words that hollow Sam out.
“Mom’s been taking good care of me.”
The blood drains out of Sam’s face. He snatches his hands away as though he’d been burned. Mary Winchester has been dead for two decades. Either the Nosoi has wormed into Dean’s feverish mind, or the fever itself is pulling ghosts from the grave. Either way, it’s cruel and Sam’s heart aches for his brother.
“Not anymore,” Sam whispers, forcing the words out steady, even as his voice trembles. His jaw sets hard. “You’ve got me now. And I’m getting you out of here.”
It takes all his strength to wrangle Dean to his feet but once he’s up, Sam throws an arm around Dean's waist and hauls his entire weight towards the staircase.
They make it a few feet before Dean stops moving, staring into the distance with a peculiar look on his face. His nose twinges, bridge crinkling like a marionette’s plucked string.
Dean snuffles noisily, wiping his nose on the collar of his pajama shirt. When Dean left, he was wearing jeans and a flannel but somewhere in this bastardized role play, he’s changed into plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt.
“Why’d you stop, we have to keep—“
“hHhh—…”
“Dean, no.”
”I have to sn…sneEHh!…oh, lost it. smNf!”
Dean’s blinking is sluggish, like it’s taking effort to peel his eyes back open every time they close. Sam watches in high definition as Dean’s expression crumbles.
His breath comes heavily and off balance. Dean braces most of his weight on Sam, leaning into him entirely as his breaths come in dizzying uneven patterns.
Tears prick the corners of Dean’s eyes and his mouth quivers, dropping wide and slack.
He pitches forward with a desperate gasp, sneezing down towards his chest, catching Sam’s shoulder in the limbo.
“iHhg’TSCH’uh! ihG’tSCHh! O-Oh, snf! SNf! Mmb, whoa—h’rSSCHHh’oh!”
Each sneeze is unforgiving, scraping along the sides of his throat. Each one is unbridled, wrenching him forward and cracking through the silent room.
It’s the worst possible timing.
Motion flickers in Sam’s periphery, and the temperature plummets ten more degrees. The air tastes salty, sharp, like breathing in fever. A wave of exhaustion slams through him, crawling hot from his gut to the back of his skull. His knees want to buckle.
He turns, gun half-drawn—
The Nosoi is already there.
She stands in the shadows, grinning, lips pulling up to reveal sharp fangs. She licks between her fingers slow, eyes shining like oil.
“Misery looks delicious on you, Sam Winchester.”
Sam’s grip tightens on Dean, who’s sagging heavier by the second. Dean shudders, then folds forward with a harsh—
“EHh—NGTSSHHh’uh!”
The sneeze tears out of him, wet and violent, dragging the Nosoi’s gaze his way. She tilts her head, curious, distracted.
Sam savors the second, dragging his gun upright. His vision wobbles, eyes sluggish to focus. Dean is dead weight against him, burning and trembling, but Sam forces his stance wide enough to keep them both upright.
“Come on, Sammy,” Dean rasps into his collar, voice raw, “shoot the bitch already.”
Sam exhales through his teeth, lifts the barrel with both hands. The Nosoi stalks closer, each step slamming another wave of vertigo into him. His arms shake. His trigger finger feels like it’s underwater.
She laughs, breath sour with rot. “Your constitution is weak, you’re already feeling the effect. Your brother’s already mine. Do you want to join him?”
Dean groans, muffled against Sam’s jacket, “Y’Not… his type.”
Sam steadies the gun, blinking hard until her outline sharpens. He pulls the trigger.
The shot cracks like thunder.
The Nosoi screams, body unraveling into black tendrils that flail. One coils across Sam’s cheek as it dissolves, leaving a burning sting that makes his eyes water. Then she’s gone, the room suddenly still.
Sam sags, chest heaving with a noisy cough, gun lowering as the sickness haze begins to thin. His shirt sticks with Dean’s sweat where his brother slumps against him, still fever-hot.
Dean rests his forehead on Sam’s shoulder, breath hitching. “Mby ndose is rudnni’g.”
Sam groans. “Yep.”
Dean lifts his head just enough to smirk weakly. “Took you long enough to find mbe.”
Sam shoves him off. Dean collapses to the floor with a graceless thud.
“—ow!”